Grand Union and Jasleen Kaur are working together on two significant commissions. Across 2025-2026 sees the development of a public artwork at the Tea Factory, Typhoo Wharf, commissioned by Stoford. From 2026-2027 we will continue to work with Jasleen on a second commission for our flagship capital site Junction Works, made possible by an Ampersand grant.
Jasleen Kaur, 2024. Image courtesy of Hollybush Gardens, London. Photo by Suzannah Pettigrew.
Jasleen Kaur’s context driven artistic process, weaves together the personal, political and spiritual. With a practice that incorporates improvisation and political mysticism as tools to reimagine tradition and inherited myths, Jasleen works with sonic memory and cultural resonances of everyday materials to think through how we connect and intervene with public infrastructure.
Jasleen’s deep responsiveness to place and people is the cornerstone of why we’ve wanted to work together for some time. The programming team remember first reading ‘Be Like Teflon’ in 2019 and recognising the innate ability to bring people together, learning quickly that this was true whether it was on paper, through objects, in space – outside, in a gallery, a gathering of people who are all preoccupied with a shared thing.
As a practice that is innately relational, and with a sensitivity to spatial experimentation and the embodied experience of people and communities, we knew that Jasleen’s work would support a continued exploration of public art practice for Grand Union through an invitation from Stoford to commission artists for Digbeth’s new BBC HQ, The Tea Factory. Over the last several years the team have been developing a considered and collaborative approach to urban regeneration, which informs everything we do within the city. This embedded notion of what public art could be is informed by artists such as Alberta Whittle, Cooking Sections and those connected to our work on our Field Commission’s site.
Jasleen’s new Public Artwork for the development’s outdoor square, due to complete in late 2026, will make visible the invisible aspects of the industrial histories of exchange and transfer of goods within the city of Birmingham. In particular thinking about waste materials and what is erased in the making of something new. The project explores ideas of materiality in relation to the city and subsequent experiences of visibility/ invisibility, considering notions of waste through the redevelopment and regeneration process.
“Gloss”, a series of flattened objects held in the ground, will tell the story of Birmingham’s many layers, histories and versions of industries, the stories held within objects, what meaning and value they retain, and who has the power to say what is made waste, and what carries through into the future. This work seeks to create moments for spatial delight (Doreen Massey), resonance and insight of erasure, and notions of regeneration and reinvigoration.
Longer term we wanted to continue to explore a longer-term conversation about how art can be made public, whose voice is heard in an area of rapid development, and how permanent an art work can be. Leading on from the Tea Factory commission we want to create a longer-term conversation about the possibilities for art-making in the public domain, experimenting with new forms.
Across 2026-2027 we will continue to work with Jasleen on a second commission, this time generously supported by a 2026 Ampersand grant. Exploring the conditions of regeneration with the many different communities of Digbeth, together we will be examining the conditions and complexities of the context on the ground in a specific and locally sensitive manner whilst also speaking to the national significance of arts and regenerative practice.
Continuing Jasleen’s exploration of the intricate relationship between space, power, and identity, and housed in relation to our new venue, Junction Works, the work will embody the intended purpose of this space: to centralise and empower those often made invisible by urban redevelopment processes.
This work with Jasleen plays a significant part in how Grand Union is working with artists to consider the complexities and sensitivities of re-development, and the significant part culture plays in creating newly imagined experiences of the city, to consider who has agency in this process.
Jasleen has been engaging nationally with the fabrics of place through development processes across Glasgow, London and Birmingham. Her work centres on creating a sensitive and poetical understanding of the experience of place and embodiment.
You can find out more about the Tea Factory, Typhoo Wharf public art commissions below, and this evolving work with Jasleen through both commissions will be shared over time.
